Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: 16/44.1k stereo master -> vinyl? (Read 3399 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

16/44.1k stereo master -> vinyl?

To any studio engineers out there:

My band is reissuing our first album on vinyl. The only problem is that we can't locate the metal plates, or even the 24/96k files. All we have is the stereo 16/44.1 files from the CD version.

At first I thought: no problem, it should be good enough. Then I remembered that music is mastered differently for vinyl than it is for CD. I just don't know how extensive the processing is for vinyl mastering, and if the music would seriously suffer compared to the original vinyl release (which was mastered from 24/96k). If it makes any difference at all, the vinyl will be 180g, short program time (~30 minutes), with roughly equal length sides for a & b, and it's loud rock music that was recorded on 8-track 1/4" analog.

Any help is appreciated.

16/44.1k stereo master -> vinyl?

Reply #1 –
Quote from: singaiya on
To any studio engineers out there:

My band is reissuing our first album on vinyl. The only problem is that we can't locate the metal plates, or even the 24/96k files. All we have is the stereo 16/44.1 files from the CD version.

At first I thought: no problem, it should be good enough. Then I remembered that music is mastered differently for vinyl than it is for CD. I just don't know how extensive the processing is for vinyl mastering, and if the music would seriously suffer compared to the original vinyl release (which was mastered from 24/96k). If it makes any difference at all, the vinyl will be 180g, short program time (~30 minutes), with roughly equal length sides for a & b, and it's loud rock music that was recorded on 8-track 1/4" analog.

Any help is appreciated.


you mean the master was an analog tape ? In that case why can't you just use the tape to cut the vinyl ? Does it have be digital ?

16/44.1k stereo master -> vinyl?

Reply #2 –
The recording engineer has the analog master tape and we can't find him.

16/44.1k stereo master -> vinyl?

Reply #3 –
I'd suspect it would be just fine. Noise and sample rate should not be an issue.

The biggest problem with vinyl mastering, from what I understand, is that the plant may reject your master for various reasons or require its modification, for stuff like excessive treble, loudness, etc. Compared to that, any loss due to using 16/44 is going to be pretty small.

16/44.1k stereo master -> vinyl?

Reply #4 –
would make for an interesting listening test between the vinyls cut from 24/96 and 16/44.

singaiya, just out of curiosity - why didn't you cut the original vinyl from the analog master instead of the 24/96 copy ?

16/44.1k stereo master -> vinyl?

Reply #5 –
If the CD version has been dynamically compressed and has plenty of clipping there might be problems, right?
Acid8000 aka. PhilDEE

16/44.1k stereo master -> vinyl?

Reply #6 –
Thanks for the replies. @goodsound: IIRC, we dumped the analog tracks into Pro Tools and mixed it down there, so the final stereo mix came from the computer at 24/96.